


It’s easy to invent a Life

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Friendship/Love, Guilt, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7868125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary makes a mistake she can't forgive easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s easy to invent a Life

“Then tell me this—how much better does it make you feel to blame yourself, Mary?” Jed asked and she was not sure if she was more surprised by the question or that he waited to hear her answer instead of throwing up his hands and walking out of the room. 

He’d been losing his patience with her over the past hour, not that he seemed to have much to begin with, and she’d braced herself for something more along the lines of an exasperated “Christ, Mary! Have it your own way then!” followed by a swift exit. She had not thought he would still be standing beside her, both of them looking out into a wet November evening, the rain silent against the pane. When had he learned to be so still?

Her hand moved reflexively in her apron pocket but the letter wasn’t there and this apron was clean. She’d had to throw the letter out after the surgery the Patterson boy had somehow survived; it was so sodden with blood, it was unreadable, unredeemable, and the morning had been so busy, she no longer remembered which man had given it to her. She wasn’t sure why this group of soldiers had even come to Mansion House—so many of them were beyond help, though perhaps it was better to die in a bed or a hallway, at least under a roof. It didn’t seem better to her to have to manage it all, though she was loath to admit it, ashamed at how she had wished they’d never come. 

There was a woman somewhere who would never get a letter, who would have to hope that whatever government was in charge at the end of this miserable, crushing War would notify her that her son, her husband, her father had was never coming home and had been buried in Virginia without the least ceremony. There might be a child who could never understand why papa rode away on a tall, brown horse and never returned. Mary knew what it meant when the end was unfinished and how that became another, separate grief. And she knew she was responsible for it because she had not put the letter somewhere safer, had not remembered it was there when the boy started hemorrhaging and she’d thrown her own body across his to slow the bleeding while Jed hurried to thread the suture. He had pulled her off the boy in a moment that was long and short and he had been entirely the surgeon; there was no other element to his touch, no other purpose than to reach the artery and sew.

And the boy was saved but the letter was not. She understood why Jed was frustrated with her. The difference seemed vast, was vast. It still ate at her though and she must have concealed it poorly since he’d asked what troubled her as soon as he’d found her at the window. His questions and tone were a far cry from the conversation they’d had when he was sick from withdrawal but there was a similarity, that way he could articulate something within her she had not been able to or had chosen to avoid. This time, however, there had been no vindictive spite in his voice, only a little impatience and fatigue, finally. It was the words themselves that struck her, that had pinned her like a butterfly.

“A little, I suppose? I know, I understand what you mean, how there are degrees to what we can accomplish and that this is just another day when it hasn’t been enough…I don’t know why it seems so hard, except that it was an easy task, to post the letter,” she said. Mary took her hand from her pocket and traced the path of a rain-drop but she could not find one alone. They were muddled together in a second, tangled pane against the glass. 

“I, sometimes I do not want to be patient and thoughtful and I do not want to have to tally up the good and reassure myself that at least I made an effort. I want—I want, another world, too much-- I’m acting like a child,” she exclaimed, then bit her lip, just as she had when she was a girl and her words had run away with her. There was a pause and then he spoke.

“I think, in truth, you are acting like a tired woman who has too much work and no one to look after her. Miss Green has her family and Nurse Hastings, to my utter bafflement, appears to have Dr. Hale and the nuns have each other, but I can’t think who there is to look after you,” Jed said quietly. 

Mary glanced at him and he was still staring out the window, though there was less and less to see other than the reflection of the room growing more defined as night fell.

“I must look after myself,” she said and she wished it had sounded firm and confident and not bleak as she feared it did. It did not seem a promising solution, yet there was nothing else to it—she had herself and God and that must be sufficient though these days, God seemed so very distant and so very silent.

“Yes, you would say that, wouldn’t you? No argument now, when it is you who is the one to be cared for. Oh Mary, I wish, I wish I could…” _Could what_ , she thought but he went on. “Only a little comfort, mind, nothing that could harm you,” he said and it wasn’t enough but his voice was warm now, not boyish. It was the tone of a responsible, serious man, so at odds with his typical passion and urgent volatility. 

“The letter is lost and this day is lost to us as well, or nearly so. I think there will be some mutton stew left for a late dinner—maybe you would join me for that? And tell me a story of…another world, Paris or New York or I don’t know, you’ve gone so many places, met so many people, you may decide,” Mary said, looking at him now, without so much effort to school her expression. 

As she had spoken, he had turned from the glass to regard her and she saw how he accepted what she asked of him. His gaze was not challenging, only affectionate and perhaps a little disappointed at her request. Would she ever know what he hoped she’d ask?

“On a night like this, after a day like this, with only Steward’s mutton stew set before us, it must be Paris, I think,” he answered and she began to feel happy, a small, homely kind of happiness that was familiar but rare for her since she’d come to Alexandria. 

She could not spend tomorrow trying to discover the author of the letter or working to write one of her own to replace it, littering the floor around her with foolscap she couldn’t afford to waste. She had found a way to live without a proper ending and so must another woman. It was not impossible. She let Jed take her forearm as they walked out the door and she felt his eyes on her, fond and careful, as he began to talk about his first ocean crossing and the harbor at Le Havre, the bold gulls that made the air ring with their hungry cries.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would try to write a more stream-lined story with just less of everything and see if it felt like enough-- fewer adjectives, elaborate images, characters, references to the past, tangents and quotations and I ended up with this. I'd had the idea of a letter that can't be sent because it is destroyed and I also wanted to explore the emotion of "sonder," the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own," here with a little distance provided by the letter.
> 
> The title is Emily Dickinson. When has she ever let me down?


End file.
